xeryfyn's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Votes are in I know I am supposed to be devoting my energies to exploring and writing about early Canadian railways and Chinese immigrants, but I just need to get this out of my head because the more I think of it, the more it distracts me. So the US elections are over for another four years and I am sad to say that Dubya is once again leading the most powerful place on earth. And it bothers me, not just because he is a slangy cross-eyed moron, not just because he has the family name to give him credibility as a politician more than ability, and not because he is a Bible thumping, homosexual hating bigot. No, it bothers me because the race with John Kerry was so incredibly close that Americans now have as hard a time identifying with one another as Anglo-Canadians do with Franco-Canadians. I read a blog that hypothesized a divorce, if you will, a separatist movement that would see the US divided by politics rather than language and morals rather than property issues. As much as the separatist movement in Quebec sparked a fervour of Pro-Canada rallies, I am not sure that if the Kerryland/Bushland idea didn�t sound so unreachable, that Americans might not rally around the idea. I mean, think of how tough it must be to get on a bus for the morning commute and be pretty sure that the person will either hug you or lynch you because of the way you cast your ballot. And if you didn�t cast your ballot, then they would both lynch you because you could have been the turning point of a tide in whatever state you happened to be in. I�m just saying that it must be tough to live in such a land divided. And despite Dubya�s vow to �win over the trust of the Democratic voter� I cant see how he�d do that without compromising the Christian right who turned out in droves to prevent that hedonistic Kerry from taking the Oval Office. There have been speculations that had Howard Dean stuck it out through the entire campaign and stood by his early platforms, he would have had the power to topple the Dubya regime. And I agree. He was firm in his beliefs, never waffled from one platform to another and was always harshly clear with his stance against the war. I liked Kerry, but like so many people, I couldn�t always tell exactly what he was, except that he was better than Bush. We�ll never know more than we can speculate, however, and that is one of the pities of a democratic system. The democrats were hoping for the young people to make a big showing at the polls and although there were 15 million voters, they weren�t the ones that hey expected. So to all who thought that they had better things to do with their Tuesday, you get what you pay for, as it were. I suppose that part of me should feel glad that Kerry didn�t get in. After all, he was a very protectionist kind of guy. All American, all the time. And, as a non-American (despite being Siamese-twinned in so many ways) I ought to look for someone in the White house who would serve Canadian needs in some way. There is at least a snowball�s chance in hell that Bush will re-open the American borders to Alberta beef (the best beef in the world, if I must interject a small bias) and to keep trade tariffs at a minimum. But that doesn�t mean I gotta like the guy. 7:43 p.m. - 2004-11-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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